Fragile Darkness (22 page)

Will said you weren't afraid. You didn't seem afraid. I remember when I thought I was drowning, and the fire. It was like a door opening, a door to somewhere else, and I

I closed my eyes, letting out a long, slow breath before continuing.

I wanted to see what was on the other side.

Delphi chose that moment to leap up beside me. “Hey, girl,” I said, dragging her to me.

Cold,
I realized sometime later. Shivering, I curled into myself and reached for my blanket.

Abruptly I opened my eyes to early morning sunlight slipping through the gauzy sheers, and Delphi's wide, unblinking stare. With her ears perked, she sat crouched on the arm of the sofa, her round eyes focused beyond me, toward the door.

I swung around.

All the chains and dead bolts were secure, and the steady red light of the security system glowed. Nobody could get through that.

At least not physically.

I shifted into a sitting position, and the pen fell from my hand. And with that the haze lifted and reality slipped in: somehow I'd fallen asleep. It was morning.

The clock said 7:21. That gave me half an hour before Dylan showed up.

With a caffeine-rush of adrenaline, I swung to the floor and saw the journal, no longer open to the letter, but a new page, blank except for the two lines scrawled in a dark bold print.

Watching you.

Time running out

I had no memory of writing the words.

I had no memory of thinking them, of what they meant. What if Julian was wrong, I wondered as I stepped into the hot spray of the shower. What if I
was
dreaming? What if the problem was remembering? What if opening my eyes whitewashed the images from my mind? What if that's why I'd written in my journal, to remember?

The possibilities opened a whole new series of doors.

I stood there thinking longer than I should have. By the time I dressed and reached for my phone, the clock showed a few minutes after eight, and texts waiting from Victoria, Deuce, Kendall, and an unknown number.

I went for that one first.

It's Will. I need to talk to you.

My heart slammed hard. My hands started to shake as I fumbled along the keys.

Where? When? Are you OK?

I hit send and waited. And waited.

No response came. Dylan did. The buzz at the door blasted into the silence, followed by voices. After a quick check in the mirror of the awesome little black dress Victoria had insisted I wear to the parades, I hurried from my room to the kitchen. The second I saw him sitting on a funky bar stool, I stopped, almost tripping on Delphi.

Smiling. That was the first thing I noticed. Dylan was smiling. It was full and sharp with a flash of white, the killer kind that hit you with the force of a searchlight.

Aunt Sara was smiling, too. On the kitchen side of the bar with her hair piled high on her head, she plucked something from a small plate and popped it in her mouth.

Delphi meowed.

My aunt looked up. Her eyes widened. “Wow!” she said, coming around the counter. “Look at you.”

Dylan did. I could feel the burn of his eyes, even though I refused to glance his way.

“Look what Dylan brought,” she said, sliding a second plate to the edge of the bar, where a tall paper cup sat next to something I hadn't noticed in those few seconds when his smile had overshadowed everything else.

“King cake and mochas,” my aunt gushed, but I couldn't stop staring at the plush puppy on the counter, with its light-gold fur and wide, love-me eyes, and the little, heart-shaped tag dangling like an earring by his face.

Of all the things I'd prepped myself for, a stuffed animal had never entered the picture. And not just any stuffed animal, but a golden retriever.

From Dylan.

Knowing I couldn't stand there all day (even if I wanted to), I crossed to the kitchen and lifted a hand to the soft, fuzzy fur. My throat got stupid tight, and the backs of my eyes burned.

I didn't want that, didn't want to feel the wad of emotion wedging into my throat, the alternating flashes of warmth and confusion, the smile that hovered inside of me, and the hurt and guilt that kept clawing over everything else. I didn't want any of that. I didn't want Dylan to slowly lift his eyes to mine and touch me in that invisible way of his, without even lifting a hand.

But it was all there, and until the Will/bliss thing was over, that wasn't going to change.

Needing to do something, I picked up the puppy and ran my thumb along its nose.

“Isn't it sweet?” Aunt Sara smiled. “He said he saw it and thought you might like it.”

I knew better than to do it, but I glanced at Dylan anyway, sitting there in his long-sleeve charcoal T-shirt and faded jeans, with his wide-palmed hands wrapped around a tall paper cup, and would have sworn he looked as awkward as I felt.

“It was in the grocery store,” he said with a no-big-deal shrug.

I'd never seen Dylan Fourcade do anything no-big-deal, or look awkward.

“He looks like Sunshine,” I whispered with a quick memory of the bathroom at Club Rouge, where I'd told Will about my first premonition of death.

Dylan's eyes, more guarded now, lifted to mine. “That's what I thought, too.”

My chest tightened. Making myself return the dog to the counter, I reached for the mocha. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “It was no big deal.”

Yeah. He actually said it.

Lifting the hot chocolate to my mouth, I had no idea what to say next.

Aunt Sara hovered, chattering about the parades and how much fun we were going to have, seemingly oblivious to the tension winding tighter by the second.

Dylan sat all still and contained, nursing his mocha.

I did the same. Picking at the amazingly cream-cheesy king cake, I knew better than to look. I knew what I would see, feel. I already had enough memories of him here, in the condo. I didn't need another.

I looked anyway.

Dylan's eyes met mine, held.

I looked away, but even staring at a blob of pastry, I could feel him still, feel the awareness winding tighter and tighter, something strong and invisible and
waiting.

It took a few seconds to realize Aunt Sara had stopped talking. She looked from me to Dylan, back to me, then muttered something about needing to make a phone call and vanished down the hall.

Finally we were alone.

 

TWENTY-TWO

I had my journal in my hands within seconds. “I need to show you something,” I said, flipping to the most recent page. “I found this when I woke up this morning.”

Dylan looked down for a long moment. “Who wrote it?”

“I think
I
did.”

He shot me a look. “You
think
?”

I made a face. “I don't know, it's like with the way I normally receive messages being blocked, they're finding other ways, like when a river hits a dam.”

Slowly, he dragged his index finger from letter to letter. “Who's watching you, the people behind bliss?”

Something quick and cold went through me. “Maybe,” I said, then, “Will texted me.”

Dylan looked up so fast our faces came within inches of each other, and that threadbare place inside me unraveled a little more. “When?”

I pulled back. “Half an hour ago. He wants to talk to me.”

“About what?”

“I haven't heard back from him.” Pushing out a breath, I guided the conversation back to an idea I'd come up with in the shower.

“Can you help me set up a camera?” I asked. “One of those nanny cameras that monitors an entire room?” I hesitated, trying to read his eyes. That, of course, was impossible. “I want to see what happens when I start writing,” I went on. “If my eyes are open or closed.” I didn't know why it mattered, or even what exactly I thought I might discover, but the need to fill in the blanks drove me. “Can we do that?”

That curtain of dark hair slipped against his cheek. “Yeah.”

For the second time that morning I smiled and said thank you.

“You ready?” he asked.

After a quick check of my phone to see if Kendall or Will had texted back, I scooped up the journal and the puppy and took them to my room, redid my lip gloss, and hurried back to the front and straight into Aunt Sara. With
her
phone.

“I can't let you out of here without pictures!” she announced, all cheerful-like. “You two look awesome!”

I froze.

Eyes sparkling, she breezed around the condo, ultimately settling by the bar, where she dragged a few candles into an artful arrangement. “How about here?”

She had the wrong idea, was all I could think. She thought Dylan and I were together because we wanted to be, not because we had to be. But there was no way to explain that, not without telling her things that would make her worry, or call Detective Jackson.

That
was worse than a picture.

Woodenly, I let her pose me, turning me just so and putting my hand on my hip. “Now smile,” she instructed.

I faked it as best as I could, until she twisted toward Dylan and crooked her finger. “You, too.”

Everything inside just kinda stopped. No, I thought frantically—
no.
I didn't want a picture with
him.
That's not what this was about.

But apparently I didn't have a choice.

He came toward me, sliding a Zorro-like mask over his eyes.

My breath turned to more of a stab.

His smile was slow, razor sharp, the small, dark slits emphasizing the glow of burnished silver.

“Wonderful!” Smiling, Aunt Sara nudged us so that we turned in to each other. Maybe she lifted Dylan's arm—maybe he did that by himself. All I knew was his hand slid against my waist as she stepped back, lifting her camera. The moment held, locked us there pressed into each other with the heat of his body blasting into mine, exactly like the night he'd carried me from the fire.

And my throat closed up all over again.

Except this time I couldn't slip out of his car like I'd done Sunday night. And I couldn't tell him good-bye, not when every road I took kept leading me straight back to him. This time I had to find a way to ignore the wrongness of being with him, and go to a parade.

*   *   *

It was like stepping into another world, some alternate universe where five different kinds of music blasted from five different directions and people danced in the streets, where the sky rained beads and doubloons, jesters ruled, women who looked like they belonged in some suburban home lifted their tight-fitting shirts for anyone who asked, and Dylan wouldn't let go of my hand.

I didn't try to pull it back, either, not with thousands of people swarming around us. If I let go,
if he let go,
the crowd would spill between us, and even with our phones, we might not be able to find each other and—

I didn't know. I didn't know what would happen if he wasn't there.
That
was the problem. No matter how many wounds being with him tore open, as long as I was trying to help Will, I was better off
with
Dylan, than without him.

Safer.

We worked our way uptown, where Victoria, Trey, and Deuce waited by the Robert E. Lee statue. An assembly line of robots marched single file in front of us. Beside us a group of older women in red hats bobbed fringed parasols to Lady Gaga.

All thousand of us stopped at one of the few corners where cars still inched along the street, and Dylan tugged me closer. “What do you think?”

I stared at a grown man in a diaper. “I … Wow.” There really were no words to describe the euphoria. “It's
wild.
”

He laughed. “Just wait.”

The crowd thickened as we neared the parade route, with ladders jutting up next to the grandstands along the curb and more than one person perched in the oaks, waiting.

Everyone was waiting.

So was I.

Heart racing, I fumbled with the zipper of my wristlet and retrieved my phone for the hundredth time, knowing I would never feel it vibrate.

No messages waited.

By the time we pushed our way toward the statue, the parade was about to start. Waving, Victoria shoved her way forward, sliding a quick, questioning glance from me to a still-masked Dylan. This was the third time in five days she'd found us together.

Shaking my head, I flashed her a look and mouthed, “Later.”

I could tell she didn't like that, but she took my hand anyway and dragged me to the curb, where Trey and Deuce waited between ladders crammed with little kids.

“Mile High!” Soul-dancing to a blast of music from across the street, Deuce shot a quick look at Dylan and twirled me under his arm. “Get ready!”

His eager, little-boy grin made me smile.

With horns and drums announcing the start of the parade, I fumbled for my phone.

Dylan's hand slipped against mine, stopping me.

The press of people boxed us in so tightly there was no room to step back.

“You just checked,” he said, and somehow I heard him even though he barely raised his voice. “Three minutes isn't going to change anything.”

Technically, I knew he was right. “But I feel like I should be
doing
something,” I said, going up on my toes so that he could hear me. “Something other than standing around, waiting.”

Up the street, sirens wailed.

“You are,” he said as the crowd swelled around the barriers and into the street.

Uniformed police pushed everyone.

“Now it's up to Will,” Dylan said, anchoring me against him. “You can't help him if he doesn't want you to.”

That was the problem.

“It's his choice, and only he can make it. You can't force him to do what
you
think is best.”